Rating: 
Summary: A Five-star book if ever there was one.
Review: This is high performance writing and could be compared in some respects with Hodges' brilliant "Alan Turing". Ms Nasar, with apparent ease, threads us through Nash's life: its mental highs, lows and recovery, along with educating us on game theory, the Riemann zeta function, and various other famous problems. She writes with great sensitivity in telling the story of what it is like to be the wife of John Nash. Also, the book is rich in subsidiary details. The thumbnail sketches of some of the participants are priceless. We learn, for example, what Dyson is like in the flesh and how Courant liked the girls. It tells how Princeton got to be great and how the Nobel awards really work. (I've met three Nobel Laureats, and this stuff is new to me). For good measure she throws in a song by Malvina Reynolds which, sadly, I have never heard. If there is a flaw in this work it is that a few examples would have clarified the concepts. But then again, Kant said that those in the sciences have no need of such aids, didn't he?The movie is baloney and can be dismissed without further comment. I understand Ms Nasar objected strenuously to this movie when it first came out, saying this is not what she wrote at all. I can see why. Go with the book. It's the real thing.
Rating: 
Summary: Recomended to those who wish a deeper insight on John Nash
Review: A marvelous biography, among the best of which I've ever read. Sylvia Nasar explores the life of John Nash in an impersonal maner. I've been impressed with how much she has explored all events concerned to his life, such as his interactin with other famous geniuses of the time, such as Robert Openheimer, Albert Einstein, among others.
While exploring his professional life, she threw in a lot of insight related to his personal life, such as his arrogance, homossexual tendency, his life with other women such as Eleanor Stier and Alicia Larde, his sons John David and John Charles (specially the amazing revelation of John Charles sickness), among many other people, as supporting or main characters in his life.
Compared to the movie, this book is a much more involving story, deeper in the sense that Sylvia Nasar explored the disease of schizophrenia, the madness within Nash's mind, his (and others') attempts to cure from it, and how succesful Nash has been throughout his trials. Recomended to those who wish to have a deeper insight on the life of such a character, his evolution from an arrogant genius, so closed within his own mind, to the recognition of a Nobel Laureate and his continuing challenges to releave his son from the same sickness which struck and crippled him for more than a quarter century.
Rating:
Summary: Genuis, Love, Reawakening...
Review: A Beautiful Mind is a essential and very loose resemblance to the movie. Its a great and brilliant biogrphy of the life of mathematical genuis John Nash who won the Nobel Prize. Th Genuis of John Nash was when he went crazy in Princton in 1949 and was a very different guy then all the others at Princton. Love came along when he met a beautiful girl so to become his wife who believed in him so much that he succeeded in life and his schitzoprenia. John Nash went through a lot of pain becoming what he is now. Reawakening is when he wins the Nobel Prize. The book isn't very touching but is very astute. It's a legacy. I rate this book with 4 stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Another unauthorized biography?
Review: This book chronicles the life of Nobel prize winner John Nash. I found it disturbing in the distinct sense of "gossip" I got from the whole book, as John Nash was only referenced as a direct source once or twice, and although Alicia Nash (John's wife) was referenced more often, I still felt that the couple's privacy and wishes weren't respected enough. Note, however, that my opinion isn't based on anything except the feeling I got from reading this book. Another downside is that there was a bit too much detail given to certain things, such as the people Nash met throughout his life... a large percentage of this book doesn't have anything to do with John Nash. Given all of that, it was still incredibly fascinating to learn about this intelligent, torn, complex person.
Rating:
Summary: Great mind... bad boy!
Review: Much has been said about this book and movie, pros and cons whichever way you may look at it. Much can be gained and enjoyed from these two different outlooks into the life of a man who not only was a mathematical genius but also a man with a controversial personality. John Nash embodies those rare cases in which an individual is endowed with a mind that surpasses the normal and also does not fit into what we term as "socially acceptable behavior." He was able to develop one of the most complex mathematical theories (Game Theory), and in his personal life he was sadistic, arrogant, and selfish. His friends and colleagues felt divided between admiration for Nash's intellectual feats and his awkward behavior.
Nasar's approach in writing this biography is strictly professional and academic. She has done a vast research into the personal life of Nash, his time, the academic environment, the effect schizophrenia had on Nash, and the intricacies of Noble Prize winning. She does get carried away in detailed explanations of the academic milieu, of the competitive environment and life circunstances of several mathematicians who directly or indirectly had contact with John Nash. She does browse over some advanced mathematical concepts but the reader should not expect in this biography a theoretical analysis of Game Theory (there are several technical books on the market solely dedicatd to this theory and its effects on social and biological sciences).
As to how Nasar addresses Nash's schizophrenia, she successfully recounts the trials Nash had to face, the methods then used to deal with a serious mental illness that affects more than two million Americans and 1 in 100 people across the world. Although this is a biography and not a treatise on schizophrenia, the author could have further expanded on this topic since it is the core of Nash's problems, of his personality traits, of professional career, and his inspiring remission. To what extent were his high intellectual capabilities responsible for his rebouncing into reality, for his abilities to overcome his delusions?
Despite the flaws that might have been previously mentioned, the story of Nash is by itself interesting and fascinating. Whoever saw the movie should read the book as well. You will have some surprises, because movies and books are different means of communication, the emotions they convey can be radically different.
Rating: 
Summary: I wanted to like this book
Review: but I found the book depressing both because of the writing and subject. In fact I had such negative feelings about the book that I refused to watch the movie until a friend insisted. The movie is excellent, wonderful, and the John Nash of the movie is interesting and human. I decided to read the book again. Certainly there is little similarity between the two stories. I don't know which one is true either. The book does not make John Nash seem human to me. I guess if I have to choose I'd pick the movie.
Rating:
Summary: Forget the Movie
Review: The movie "A Beautiful" was what a menu is to a feast. Nasar's biography of John Nash is a marvelous read. If you enjoy biography, mathematics and economics, a study of the descent to paranoia, the Nobel Prize process and reading about the world of universities, this is the book for you. It is a stirring experience and a weekend read. Not fiction, it has all of the 'must finish' tension that fiction presents. And as with the best of fiction, it does not have a contrived ending, for the book is life itself, at its most complex.
Rating:
Summary: "What a Beautiful Book" !
Review: Let me begin with a personal note -- I had spent beautiful years at the University of Chicago (1962 - 1966) during which time I campaigned and lobbied for the creation of a new Nobel award for econimics. Of course, I take no credit for the ultimate establishment of the prize, but did know a great many people named in this book. But not John Forbes Nash. At Univ. of Chicago I met or corresponded with Mike Newman (brother of John Von Neumann), Milton Friedman, Herbert Simon, Paul Samuelson, John Kemeny, Wassily Leontief and a half dozen more mentioned in this book. But not John Forbes Nash. I have been to Bluefield, WV and to Princeton, and MIT and RAND and even studied a little game theory and knew of "equilibrium graphs" and bargaining and even made a small contribution to random theory, but I had never heard of John Forbes Nash. But now I have, thanks to Sylvia Nasar and this fine biography. I love bios, especially American ones (had just finished reading a delightful one about her life on an Arizona ranch by Sandra Day O'connor) and was rarin' to go when I got this book as a gift. The cover photo (Russel Crowe) interested me, but the charismatic drawing of Mr. Nash inside gripped me. So did the book. I especially liked the style and format of the book. I love footnotes and read them as a separate joy. The photos were exelent; wish there were more. I read it chapter by chapter twice. First with interest on psychology, and second with focus on math. Sylvia Nasar did a mastreful job with both, each complex in its own way. Thank you for this fine book. Give us more Nasar, more Nash. Bernie Lumbert
Rating:
Summary: Worst book ever
Review: This book does not do justice to John Nash. He's a brilliant man and deserves someone to write a real book about him, not just copy down facts and call it a book. Anyone with time on their hands could have written this book. It's just a collcection of facts, many of them completely useless and irrelevant, that are put together in a "book". It's much more interesting to read Webster's dictionary than this book. John Nash is a great man, I'm so sorry on his behalf for this "book".
Rating:
Summary: Thoughtful examination of a beautiful mind
Review: I bought this book because I saw the movie and was both deeply moved by it and intrigued by John Nash's life. During the entire first part of the book, however, I was quite lost because I couldn't match what was going on in the book to what I had just seen in the movie. The movie, it turns out, does not in any real way reflect the true life of John Forbes Nash and anyone who really wants to know what his struggle was like should read this book. As much as I loved it, I want to warn people that it wasn't what I was expecting. One reviewer said that it "read like a fine novel," but I did not find that to be the case. Ms. Nasar is indeed a fine writer, but don't buy this book if you're looking for fiction. See the movie instead. This book reflects the stuff of life, and it's complicated. But, as with most things complicated, it's well worth it. Not only was I entertained and enriched by the subject matter, I actually learned a great deal. The movie made it seem as if John Nash wandered around Princeton waiting for his "original thought" to pop into his head and that once it arrived, he was finished. In reality, John Nash wrote some very important papers during his early years at school, and his game theory was only one of dozens of major contributions he made to the mathematical community during his life. More surprisingly, some of his contributions came during the frenzy of his illness. The movie also depicted John Nash as a fairly charming man, when the truth is that he was quite immature, selfish and downright cruel in most respects. The good news is that the author doesn't try to gloss over or distort the facts in order to build John Nash into some kind of hero. There is no need, because his story is heroic without any hype or distortion. He overcome great tragedy, from his jaded childhood to an unbelievably debilitating mental illness, and became a loving, patient and dedicated parent to his schizophrenic son. Was John Nash a nice person? Most decidedly not. But I find that many extraordinary people, be they scientists, artists, scholars, actors, and the like, lack many of the social skills that us mere mortals cling to. And I, for one, truly admire Mr. Nash and feel fortunate to have had such an in-depth, comprehensive glimpse into his life. In the end, my only criticism of the book is that it was difficult to follow the timeline and keep track of the people in Nash's life. The author frequently skipped ahead in time and then back to the present, and she recalled characters with no reminder of who they were after not having mentioned them for hundreds of pages. A timeline in the front of the book with names of Nash's colleagues and brief summaries of their connection to him would have been very helpful.
|
